Posted: Fri 19 Aug 2005, 15:09 Post subject:
Can I add apps to live CD without putting them in ISO?

Hello everyone. This is my first post but I have been involved with Linux for approx six months and with Puppy for about three of those. I've tried numerous other live cd flavors of Linux but Puppy IMO is by far the best. Lean and mean is the way to go. Thanks to Barry for his labor of love and to all the other "Pupsters" who have nurtured its growth.

I use Puppy in its bootable CD format but would like to find a way to add add'l files to the remainder of the disk. Since Puppy only uses approx 50 -60 MB that leaves alot of empty space on the CD that I would like to put to use if I can. Perhaps some mp3 files or whatever. However, once I've burned the ISO there doesn't seem to be any way (I know of) to burn anything else. The burner program I use informs me that either the CD is "unwritable or full".
Does anyone know how to get around this limitation or of another way to accomplish what I want to do?

Whatever add'l files I'd like to add I want to keep them separate from the ISO so they do get loaded into RAM and exceed that capacity. By having these files available on the CD I wouldn't need any HD.

Don't forget that Puppy does not need the CD after startup. You could put all your MP3 files onto another CD, mount that and play to your heart's content. Not as elegant as having them on the same CD, but simple to do and works for me.

It would seem Yogi, that you require some version of the MultiSession Puppy. Now as far as I am aware this is still experimental - perhaps we might have a progress report or look here:

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/multi-puppy.htm
How are people getting on with this?

I know I was one of the first to use it - I saved a file - went to another machine loaded (from CD) on that - saved again and returned to the original machine - It was (this was the pre-alpha) working.

[I promptly swooned]

PS. Are you a yogi? I used to teach yoga and practice a form of yoga for martial artists. I am the developer of a special yoga for shy people:
http://pages.britishlibrary.net/lobster/exxo/yoga/earthing.html

This is by no means the correct way to have extra apps and files after boot ,but may be a way to start playing with this idea . After trying to create puppy-unleashed-1.0.4 I made a few coasters and decided to save all package directories to a cd before wiping the drive and starting over .The result was ,after i did create the iso and boot puppy I created a seperate partition and copied the files to it. Now after a reboot I can mount this partition and find all the great apps and other files I wanted to save so I didnt have to download them agin .If iI want to use an app from the partition ,sometimes I can open the file find the bin file and drag and drop it in the running system and it works .Like I said I know this is not the correct way of doing things ,but after a while I'll be able to remaster the cd and I'll learn how to add files to the new cd so I'll have it all on one cd . I kind of like to be able to remove the cd and mount somthing new and usable without spoiling the beauty of the fast , light distro ,but then this is the beauty of linux ,you can mount and umount whatever you want

Thanks everyone for the multiple ideas/solutions to my question. I agree with BlackAdder. That is the simplest and best for most users. I will also try Raffy's suggestion and see what happens. As a side note: sometimes I am using a PC that has a CD player but no sound card or sound on board. In that case, I am stuck using the headphone jack thru the CD player and listening to CD tracks (which eat up alot of memory). That's just the way it goes.

This is by no means the correct way to have extra apps and files after boot ,but may be a way to start playing with this idea. .... I created a separate partition and copied the files to it. .... If iI want to use an app from the partition, sometimes I can open the file find the bin file and drag and drop it in the running system and it works. .... I kind of like to be able to remove the cd and mount somthing new and usable without spoiling the beauty of the fast , light distro ,but then this is the beauty of linux ,you can mount and umount whatever you want

Hey, that sounds pretty cool. Would it be possible to put big or rarely-used apps on a separate CD, which you place in the drive after loading Puppy from the live CD, mount, and from which you could then somehow run an app without having to install it?

I'm trying to make a 266mhz Thinkpad 600 with 160 meg RAM, usable. After a few days of every inexplicable failure you don't ever want to hear about, I finally got a nice screen, thanks to Blade's framebuffer-enabled version of Puppy. Thanks for getting me this far, Blade.

Unfortunately, I really need to have OpenOffice for my work. Blade's framebuffer-friendly version has only Leafpad. ChubbyPuppy doesn't seem to be available with a framebuffer. I do not have permission to create a new partition on the hard drive of the computer I use to burn the CD's, so I cannot try out Puppy Unleashed. I can't load puppy to the hard drive via option 1 because the laptop has no floppy. For some reason having to do with SuperBlock problems, I cannot install to the hard drive using option 2. (In fact, I get SuperBlock error messages with either of two hard drives I've tried installed.) It will, however, let me save to the hard drive in the usual live-cd way (i.e. I'm not using multisession). The laptop has no ethernet connection, so I cannot use pupget to add the openoffice software. I tried hooking it up to my dsl modem via the usb connection, but couldn't get an internet connection that way.

(I have no other OS on this system. Every install is thwarted by something, usually by the stage where it restarts to continue the installation, but instead restarts and forgets it was installing.)

All this leads me to the conclusion that I need to somehow add the OpenOffice programs to a LiveCD without using Puppy Unleashed. I do have a usb key, which, after two weeks, I have utterly given up on installing puppy to, but which may be relevant to advice-givers. Any ideas or suggestions?

You can in most circumstances (not the beta) just download the self installing OO and install that - It is much bigger than the Puppy one but I have downloaded and it just works . . . (came as a great surprise to me)

Thanks. I'll try that. Specifically, I'll try burning the OOo (probably the 2.0 beta) setup file to a CD on my desktop, then booting puppy in my laptop, then removing the puppy CD and mounting the OOo setup CD, then running that tar.gz file. I'll let you all know sometime tomorrow how it worked out if I get a chance.

The laptop has no ethernet connection, so I cannot use pupget to add the openoffice software.

You can always download the pupget package of openoffice here:
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux/pupget_packages-1/

and then install it using pupget.

You create an entry in /root/.packages/packages.txt for the new package, download the package somewhere local, then fire up PupGet and it will be listed. Highlight it and click 'Add'. Then when asked where to download the package, choose 'local'. It can then also be uninstalled._________________Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the Puppy Linux Foundation since 2005

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